The Intersputnik International Organization of Space Communications will lease four transponders of the LMI-1 satellite (75o East) to the Israeli telecommunications operator Gilat Satcom Ltd. The contract was signed as Intersputnik¿s delegation was visiting Israel.
Gilat Satcom has leased capacity in C band to offer access to the Internet backbone via satellite, voice and data services in LMI-1 Beam A covering most of Africa and Europe, the Middle East, Russia and the CIS as well as the Asia-Pacific Region.
Gilat Satcom¿s customer base includes several hundreds of remote terminals, mostly in Africa. Medium and small corporate users and ISPs of different Tiers avail themselves of a variety of Gilat Satcom¿s solutions ranging from plain access to the Web to more complicated projects such as international telephony, private networks or virtual private networks.
Services are offered using Gilat Satcom¿s hub station in Petach-Tikva, Israel. Owing to the outstanding parameters of LMI-1, customers can be connected to the hub via cost-efficient 1.8m or larger VSAT terminals with standard radio frequency and Internet equipment.
Ordered by the joint venture Lockheed Martin Intersputnik, the LMI-1 spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems, USA, and brought into use in November 1999. LMI-1 carries 44 high-power transponders in C and Ku bands and features high station-keeping accuracy.
With a guaranteed active lifetime of 15 years, LMI-1 boasts a unique four-beam service area covering the whole of Russia and the CIS, Europe, South and South-East Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Australia.
Also, Intersputnik and Gilat Satcom signed documents to meet Gilat Satcom’s requirements to lease more capacity on the LMI-1 satellite later this year.
